The invention relates generally to computer network data management facilities and, more particularly, to disaster recovery techniques for use therein.
Many large organizations manage the storage and access of their data through the use of multiple file servers. For example, a corporation may utilize one or more servers to store/manage the data and/or applications for each of its operating units or divisions. As a result, each operating unit (e.g., engineering, sales, marketing) has ready access to their data and applications. However, the use of multiple servers also increases the difficulty individual users have in locating the data they want or need. For example, if an individual assigned to the engineering division needs to review product marketing or sales information they must know what server and the location on that server where the desired information is stored. It will be appreciated that the difficulty of locating information in this manner increases as the size of the organization grows—that is, as the number of servers increases.
Partly in response to this problem, Distributed File System (DFS) technology has been developed that allows a user (typically a network administrator) to logically associate a single directory structure whose contents can span a number of file servers and file shares (e.g., directories), making it easy to browse the network to find the data and files needed. As would be known to one of ordinary skill in the art, DFS allows an administrator to map logical names (e.g., “Marketing”) with one or more shared resources such as, for example, the marketing material for each product or division within a business regardless of where that data may be physically stored.
While DFS technology has simplified the task of managing network resources (e.g., hardware devices and files), it does not provide any means to identify and recover from the failure of a network resource while providing near continuous access to the underlying data. Accordingly, it would be beneficial to provide a mechanism to detect and recover from the failure of shared network resources.